txsportsscribe said:
having just assumed the big chair at my little rag, i'd love to change things to where the individual accomplishments and team scores were secondary when it comes to youth sports. just seems we're making kids grow up too quickly when so much importance is placed on the final score of a little league or junior high game. i like the once-a-week youth sports page idea and the team photo idea but, keeping in mind that seeing little jack or jill in the paper (or just their name) equates to increased single-copy newspaper sales that make a big difference for many, many small papers, how do you handle the team that just won a big tournament (in their eyes) and submits not only the scores but their version of a gamer? also, at our paper, youth football league coaches submit reports that generally were turned into a paragraph per team per game and run once a week simply to fill space and make people happy. we also have regularly run middle school "gamers" from e-mails sent by coaches, as well as freshman and junior varsity games, often with photos because i had the time to stop buy and snap a few shots. at what age/grade do games become true events to cover with staff gamers and photos? i would think parents would rather see a team photo than simply a name on a story but you never know. i'm open to suggestions.
When do games become true events? High school varsity. Does anybody in the community at large say, "boy, I want to go to Queefrag High's JV game tonight. That oughta be bonkers!" No way. High school varsity football? heck yes. That's a big deal that draws people from the community in an event-like setting. More people than just the parents care. Same for high school basketball.
That's where I have a problem with giving lots of coverage to minor sports. No, retard mom, I don't give a shirt that your precious little shirtbag of a soccer player "works just as hard as the football players." It's not about rewarding hard work. It's about using my resources on something the people in my community care about. When there are 30 people at said soccer game, and all 30 are parents, that tells me that NO ONE CARES. So why should the paper? Get the scores in through a call-in, write a couple of grafs for your roundup. That's all it deserves.
Soccer/softball/cross country do not deserve the same REGULAR SEASON coverage as football and basketball, and you will never convince me otherwise. The public doesn't care about these sports. There are obvious exceptions (the huge XC invite that draws 50 schools and a ton of people to town, etc.). But that's it.
